


To Remember For Always

by genarti



Category: Susan Cooper - Dark Is Rising series
Genre: M/M, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2004, recipient:Oakdoitter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-25
Updated: 2004-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-14 10:52:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/148466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genarti/pseuds/genarti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bran visits Will, and discovers that memory is an uncertain thing. Mild slash.  (Written for Oakdoitter for <a href="http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/9/toremember.html">Yuletide 2004</a>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Remember For Always

_Shall we, too, rise forgetful from our sleep,_  
And shall my soul that lies within your hand  
Remember nothing, as the blowing sand  
Forgets the palm where long blue shadows creep  
When winds along the darkened desert sweep?  
  
\-- Sarah Teasdale

Bran leaned against the train window and watched the Welsh countryside slide past. It was raining, and the hills were grey, melting into the mist and sky. The steady vibration of the engine rattled through his bones.

His seatmate, a woman with a florid round face and dark hair streaked with grey, was asleep, and had been nearly since she boarded at Aberdyfi. He could feel the covert stares of others around the car, and the averted eyes of those who didn't want to stare at the freakish albino boy, with his white skin and white hair. Let them stare, he thought, and resettled himself against the seat back. A faint reflection looked back at him from the window, pale face floating above black sweater, golden eyes hidden and inscrutable behind dark glasses.

The train slowed, pulling into Machynlleth. The clouds and grey hills were hidden by the buildings of the station, their stones dark with rain. Bran watched raindrops sliding down the window, and wondered how many of Will's siblings would be home. James, of course, on holiday like Will, after Lent term -- no, they called it Hilary term at Oxford. He couldn't remember what James would call it, at King's College. Winter term, at any rate. Mary would be off visiting a friend most of the holiday, Will had said; Bran had no idea about the older ones.

Except for Stephen, of course. On leave, Will had said in his last letter, and visiting for a few weeks with his wife. For all their length and chattiness, Will's letters were usually restrained, and this one had been no exception, but still Bran had gotten an impression of deep excitement. He wondered what Stephen would be like. The eldest brother, he had been away in the Navy for years and years. Bran had never met him.

Over the course of several visits he had met all the other members of the huge and boisterous Stanton clan. He liked them all, though the thought of all nine of them under one roof was mildly terrifying. Even when only four or five were home it was a dramatic change from his father's tiny house. Owen Davies was quiet and orderly; Will's siblings were anything but. Bran was very fond of them, if slightly overwhelmed, and secretly rather envious.

The whistle blew and the train rattled out of the station. His seatmate snorted in her seat, rearranged herself, and went back to snoring. Bran gave up on speculation and the view out the window, and stood up to rummage in his rucksack. He could read the book about Meredudd son of Owain Glyndwr that Ceridwen at school kept pushing at him, and then he would stop her nagging and maybe get an essay out of it too, next term. Though he doubted it would be much use; Ceridwen liked tales of starry-eyed speculation.

Hours later, when the sky was beginning to turn pink and gold over slate rooftops, the train pulled into High Wycombe station. Bran gathered his rucksack and suitcase and stepped off, and grinned to see Will with his father, both peering intently at the wrong car. A moment later Will glanced over and saw him, and Bran felt his grin widen at the way Will's sudden smile transformed his round face. With a wave, Will trotted over, followed more slowly by his father.

"Hullo, Bran," said Mr Stanton, as Will took Bran's rucksack from him. Bran had learned over the years that strict independence on this matter wasn't worth the polite arguments with a stubbornly courteous Stanton, and no longer bothered to stop Will from taking a bag. "Have a good trip?"

"Fine, thanks," said Bran automatically.

"The car's over this way," said Will, slinging the rucksack over his shoulder and setting off. Bran fell into step with him, and Mr Stanton trailed after.

Stowing Bran's suitcase in the boot, Mr Stanton offered Bran the passenger seat. "Ah, the back is fine," said Bran, as he did every time they had this discussion. "Keep Will company."

Will just grinned and, when the car was in gear and his father's eyes on the road, took Bran's hand. "Glad you could make it," he said.

"Me too," said Bran, returning the grin, and twined their fingers together.

"Equinox tomorrow," said Will, that night.

"Hmm?" Stephen sat curled in an armchair, tea mug cupped in both broad hands. Helen, his bright-eyed warm wife, had declared herself tired from the long train journey and gone to bed early. "You can uphold the family honor, love," she'd told Stephen cheerfully.

"Spring equinox," Will repeated. "When the day and the night are balanced. Lady Day, they used to call it."

"And the light triumphs over the winter darkness, and in church it is the Feast of the Annunciation next week," said Stephen mildly. "I know what it means. Any special reason you mention it?"

"Just an observation."

"A mystical day," said James sepulchrally, coming into the room. "A day when the borders of the world are thin, the walls between life and death weaken, and Will forgets that he promised to feed the rabbits."

Stephen snorted, and Bran snickered. "That's Samhain, dolt," Gwen called from the kitchen, where she was making herself a sandwich; she was pregnant, and discovering cravings. "Don't they teach you anything in that school of yours?"

"I," said James with dignity, "am studying biology, and don't have to know any of that. Go talk to Will's anthropologists if you want anything accurate. He _did_ promise to do the rabbits, though. Is there any tea for me?"

"So I did," said Will amiably, setting his mug on the table and shoving himself off the sofa. "Here, finish off my tea if you like. Want to come, Bran?"

"Oh, why not," said Bran, following suit.

James sprawled across the newly vacated sofa, and Bran gave him a half-hearted glare. James grinned and waved. "Mind you wrap up, now. Cold out."

"Cheers, James," said Will, rolling his eyes, and detoured to the coat rack. He shrugged on a plaid jacket, and tossed Bran another that was probably James'. Bran, who refused to wear red plaid on principle, eyed it dubiously, but pulled it on rather than go digging for his own coat, which was still at the bottom of his suitcase.

Outside, the air was cold and silent but for the frost crunching beneath their feet, as they trooped out to the barn. It was nothing of the sort, really, just a half-converted stable, but the whole family called it that anyway. Bran alternated between doing the same and teasing Will about real farms and real barns.

Tonight, he was too glad of the privacy to be snide about the building. He let Will close the heavy wooden door behind them and flick on the single dim lightbulb, and then he pulled the other boy to him, leaning back against the door and sliding his arms around his waist. Will let himself be pulled. With a slow bright smile, he wound his arms around Bran's neck. "Missed you," he said.

"'Course you did," said Bran.

Will wrinkled his nose. "Arrogant sod," he said fondly, toying with the hair at the nape of Bran's neck.

Bran grinned, not bothering to deny it, and bent a little to kiss him.

It was several minutes later that Will pointed out, reluctantly, that the others would eventually wonder why they were taking so long to feed a few rabbits, and several minutes after that when they actually broke apart long enough to fill the feed pail with pellets from the bin. They kept their arms around each other's waists as they made their way to the wooden hutches. Bran amused himself, while Will poured rattling streams of sweet-smelling pellets into the feed boxes, by trying to distract him enough with kisses to neck and jaw to make him spill the rabbits' food. He only succeeded once, and that was because he hit a ticklish spot by accident, but that was enough to satisfy him. The point of the exercise wasn't really the rabbit food, after all.

Bran sprawled on Will's bed the next afternoon, head resting on folded arms, and watched Will frown at his bookcase. "Offended you, did they?" he asked, grinning.

Will blinked at him, under a flopping fringe of thick brown hair. His expression was blank and bewildered. It was rather cute, really, Bran thought.

"The books," he clarified.

"Oh." Will raked his hair off his forehead impatiently, not appearing to notice or care that it fell immediately back into his eyes, and turned to scowl again at the bookshelves. "Looking for a book, is all. To show Stephen. But I can't find the damn thing. I swear I left it on this shelf..."

He moved to the other bookcase, by the bed, and scanned the coloured spines with irritation. The shelves were scattered with trinkets, driftwood and carvings and small pebbles of all hues from near-black to a gleaming blue-green, and Will occasionally shifted something to frown exasperatedly at the book behind it. Feeling curious and slightly bored, Bran reached for his hand, twining his fingers with Will's, and set about seeing how easy Will would be to distract.

Not particularly easy, it turned out. Either Will actually cared about finding the book, or he was being contrary. From the amused look he'd slanted sidelong through his lashes, Bran reckoned it was the latter. Still, he was quite willing to be persistent, especially if it didn't require him to move from the bed, and so he propped his head on his free arm and let his fingers wander up and down Will's arm and around his hand, under the loose sweater, tracing tiny aimless designs.

There was something odd under his fingers, he realized after a few minutes. Faint ridges, almost imperceptible. He'd never noticed that before. He pushed up Will's sleeve, curiously.

It was a scar, old and pale, livid against Will's wrist: a circle quartered by a cross, regular and geometric like a brand. Bran frowned, and shot a glance of inquiry at Will, who had gone very still and totally expressionless.

He did that, sometimes. Bran could never predict what would cause it, though once in a great while he could tell what it was hiding, see that Will was upset or confused. Usually, he just had to wait while Will decided how he was going to react. Usually it took him only a bare brief second, and then he was normal again, as if someone had flipped a switch inside him. Bran wasn't happy about it, exactly, but he refused to let it bother him. He felt, somehow, that it was something so fundamental to Will that anyone who intended to love him had no real choice but to accept the occasional unexplained moments of frozen unreadability. His family, certainly, never seemed bothered, though Bran had seen him do it in front of them once or twice. Perhaps they didn't notice, or perhaps they were so used to it that they thought nothing of it.

This time it lasted only an instant, an eyeblink that anyone who didn't know to watch for it might have missed, and then Will said lightly, "Oh, that's from years ago. Burned myself."

"Funny shape," Bran commented. "What the hell did you burn it on, boyo?"

"Old iron thing. Some sort of trivet." Will shrugged. "I don't even know why it was hot, really -- left on the hearth, I think. Right near the fire. Managed to put my arm right straight on it." He sounded more amused by his own clumsiness than anything.

"Hmm." Bran stared at the scar. It gave him a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had a sudden urge to move Will's arm up so it was crooked over his head, displaying the scar like a banner, or a shield. Instead, he traced it gently with a finger, circle and cross, and looked up in surprise when Will shivered.

"It's just an old scar, Bran," said Will mildly. "Nothing special." Then his wrist slid out of Bran's grasp as he turned a little, bracing a hand on the bed, and leaned over to kiss him. Bran let his hands drift to Will's waist under his shirt, and happily forgot all about strange old scars.

* * *

Bran sat under a spreading oak tree outside his hall of residence, surrounded by stacks of library books, and scowled at his notebook. The page in front of him was supposed to be resolving into the preliminary outline for an essay on the legacy of Owain Glyndwr and his uprising, but instead it was covered in scratched-out beginnings and geometric doodles. He hadn't yet found the hook to build the essay around, the idea that would pull all his scattered thoughts together, and he knew from experience that until he did he wouldn't manage much. Waiting for inspiration was an irritating business, though, and so he glowered at the paper as though he could command it to give up its secrets, and filled the margin with scribbles.

Ieuan Roberts clattered out the door of Pantycelyn hall, bookbag slung over one shoulder and ubiquitous cigarette in his hand. Bran seized upon the interruption gratefully. " _Hylô_ , Ieuan. Where are you off to?"

"Library." Ieuan wrinkled his snub nose. "To spend the rest of the day looking for symbolism in dinosaurs, lucky boy that I am. Marxist symbolism, if I can. Triumph of the proletariat, as shown by giant dumb reptiles. _Iesu mawr_."

Bran laughed. "For Llewellyn, is it? Lovely. Just moan about the evils of capitalism every few sentences and she'll love you. Double points if you pull in Thatcher. That's what Bethan says, at least. Arthur Conan Doyle again, this is? The Lost Land?"

"The Lost World, yes. Wish it would stay lost, I am telling you, if she gives us topics like these."

"Mm," said Bran, who listened to these same sorts of complaints every time Ieuan was given an essay to write, and listened again to him wax rhapsodic about his ideas after a few afternoons in the library stacks and a tutorial or two. "You'll manage."

"Not the point," grumbled Ieuan. He shrugged his bookbag higher on his shoulder. "Well, I should get about it, I suppose. _Mi wela't ti'n hwyrach_."

" _Hwyl_ ," said Bran absently, turning back to his work. As Ieuan clomped away, he added, "Ieuan?"

"Hmm?" Ieuan paused and glanced over his shoulder.

"What is the Lost Land? Do you know? Some sort of a book, or something, is it? Or a place in a book, maybe. Sticking in my memory, it is, and I ought to know it. It'll bug me now until I remember."

"No idea," said Ieuan cheerfully, and he was gone.

Bran stared at his notebook, and in his head was not Owain ap Gruffydd, but only that phrase, _the Lost Land, the Lost Land_ , ringing through his head like a bell. "The Lost Land," he said aloud. "It was important." It slipped through his mind, teasing, like a silver darting salmon, and he shook his head abruptly as if shaking out the thought. _It will come to me_ , he thought firmly, and bent to work with determination on old Owain.

A week later, at dinner, Bran prodded with his spoon at his food. It claimed, at least, to be beef stew, but it tasted nothing like Mrs Evans' or Mrs Rowlands', and the texture was strangely gluey. He was trying to decide if he was hungry enough to bother finishing it, or if it would be better to just give up and move on to pudding. Across the table, Ceridwen and Megan from down the corridor argued about some editorial about foxhunting. Ceridwen, who fancied herself an activist, counted animal rights among her various causes and could be found engaging in debates like this any day of the week. Megan was an Ag. student who simply seemed to know about anything relating to politics, probably because of the way she avidly followed at least five newspapers the way ordinary people followed television programmes.

"What do you think, Bran?" Ceridwen appealed.

He raised his eyebrows at her. "You are asking a shepherd's son how he feels about foxes?"

"Oh, bah." She flapped a hand dismissively. "Foxes don't carry off sheep."

 _The_ milgwn _do_. It was so strong and certain a thought that he nearly said it aloud to city-bred Ceridwen, who had probably never even heard of the great grey foxes of the mountaintops. In his mind flashed a sudden picture of a rangy dog fox, grinning, tongue lolling, muzzle splashed with red blood. Abrupt fury at the fox washed over him, and then with the image it was gone past grasping.

He bit back the words that rose in him, confused, and realized the girls were still waiting for a response. "Still a nuisance, they are," he managed, and heard it come out of his mouth light and normal.

"A nuisance, he says, and so they hunt them down for sport!" Ceridwen was off again. Bran gave up on the stew and got up to fetch a piece of cake, callously leaving Megan to fend for herself.

His attention was not on the room around him, though, and when he sat back down he stared unseeing at his plate and tried to remember the image of the dog fox, or where he'd seen it that the brief memory had been so clear. He couldn't even figure out why he was so certain it had been memory and not imagination, though he was. All that he could see when he tried to remember was, strangely, the sight of Will's scar, pale and old and perfectly geometric, in the thin sunlight of the attic bedroom.

Soon after that, the dreams started. Bran didn't know what he was dreaming, exactly; ordinarily he had a good memory for dreams, but these he never retained. All he knew was that some mornings he found himself awake and yearning for something that slipped away even as he fumbled desperately for it, clutching for an image or a word or a sound, anything.

It was important, whatever it was, he knew that; it mattered deeply and it danced just beyond his grasp, and he could not remember. As he woke fully, even that left him, and he rose to get dressed and go to breakfast or lectures with only the vague memory of having had a bad dream, or a good dream he had not wanted to wake from.

At the term's end he handed in his essays, and did well enough on them that Mrs Evans beamed and hugged him when he told her. His father only nodded and told him earnestly that he was glad to hear that Bran had kept proper attention to his studies, but Bran had expected that reaction. By now he was old enough to read it for the approval it was.

On his first day back at Clwyd he went with John Rowlands and his dogs to fetch sheep for dipping from Betty Prichard's far pasture. She was a widow in all but fact now, her husband Caradog in the asylum these past seven years, and though she kept the farm and two hired men she had help from the Evans farm now and then in the busy times. Bran had always felt obscurely responsible for her, poor woman, and he thought John did too.

John Rowlands' hair was all iron grey now, and his lean brown face creased deeper than ever, and not all lines of laughter. But he still had a warm deep voice and an air of curious power, and after the first bad years after Mrs Rowlands' death he had learned to laugh and play the harp again, though less often.

"Good to see you, _bachgen_ ," said John that morning when they set out, and Bran grinned sidelong at him behind dark glasses, remembering the last year when he had been debating back and forth with himself about university. He had wanted to go, but always a little voice inside him had pointed out that people went off to school and did not come back to the hard life of farming. Leaving to study in Aberystwyth seemed a betrayal of the strange small family who had raised him here among the hills and valley fields.

It had been John Rowlands who had helped him make up his mind at last, when Bran confessed his dilemma late one night as they watched over a hard lambing. "Do what is best for you, Bran Davies," he had said, plaiting leather between his fingers to make a collar for Rhys's new puppy. "If you want to come back here after it all, you will. And if you want to leave, a lack of schooling will not keep you." When Bran left that September for UWA, his father had fretted in his sober anxious way, but John had only smiled and helped him carry his bags to the car, and said "See you later, boyo," as the car door closed.

Now they worked together in the old easy rhythm, sometimes silent but for whistles and words to the dogs, sometimes talking about the past year on the farm or at school. It was nearing noon when they passed through the gate into the east field and saw Rhys at the far edge, waving. He shouted something unintelligible, greeting rather than alarm, and set off across the field to meet them.

Bran cocked his head, listening to the faint dying echo of Rhys' call. "The mountains are singing," he murmured.

John Rowlands looked at him curiously. "Hmm?"

"The echo. _Y maent yr mynyddoedd yn canu_."

John's lined brown face crinkled into a smile. "There's poetic, now."

Bran laughed. "I suppose so. No, I think I read that somewhere, or heard it. Familiar, it sounds, somehow. Not like something I made up out of my own head. And there's a second part to it, too... I don't know. I can't remember."

"Oh, well," said John, smile still lingering in the creases around his eyes. "If it is important, you will. -- _Bore da_ , Rhys. _Sut 'dach chi?_ "

* * *

"Your friend Will comes tomorrow, is it?" Owen asked over supper, though he knew the answer already. John Rowlands and Mr Evans had discussed the matter of train times at breakfast, and who could be spared to take the Land Rover.

"That's right," Bran answered anyway, and reached for a second piece of meat. It was a Friday, with no church meeting for Owen, and one of the few days when they had supper together at home instead of at the Evans'.

"That will be nice for you," Owen said, fastidiously rearranging his napkin in his lap. "I know it is lonely here for you, sometimes. Away from your school friends and all."

Bran looked at him in astonishment. His father rarely spoke of such things, or even seemed to acknowledge the possibility. When he was younger, Bran had believed firmly that Owen was entirely oblivious to any feeling of loneliness or isolation in his strange colourless son; in recent years they had come to a better understanding of each other, but it was still mostly a silent one. He felt a sudden rush of warmth for his solemn precise father. "I like it here, da," he said.

Owen smiled his tiny tight-lipped grimace of a smile, and wiped his mouth with his napkin. "I know you do, and I am glad of it," he said. "Will you be going with Rhys tomorrow to fetch him?"

"No," said Bran. "I told Mr Evans I would take that last flock to the northeast field with Pen, and walk the fences there. Will can find me there whenever he comes."

"All right," said his father, and that was that. "There is jelly in the cupboard for pudding, from Mrs Evans. You could fetch it whenever you are done, and I shall make the tea."

That night, Bran dreamed that he walked through a hallway of white stone. It was long, straight-sided, receding into the distance. There was something behind him, to escape, or perhaps something ahead to reach. He felt no fear, and it did not occur to him to run, or hurry his slow deliberate steps over the white-gravelled floor.

A rosebush grew out of the stone floor before him, small blossoms blue as speedwell, dark green vines shading to purple in the shadows. He looked around and saw that the whole hallway was covered in them, floor and sides and even roof. He touched a flower and it was in his hand, nodding on its stem, round and soft and heavy as velvet. He walked on, and the carpet of thorny tangled rosebushes did not impede him.

After a time -- a minute, an hour, a year -- he realized that he was in a boat, a small coracle, drifting down a wide river. He always had been, and not a hallway at all. In his hands was a pole, golden as the sky at dawn, and the boat was carved about with stags and leaping dogs. The river was broad and the current swift, and about it grew great alder trees, crowded close together, trunks mottled grey. Their leaves rustled like whispering voices, speaking a language he could not understand.

The river widened suddenly, emptying into a great flat lake surrounded by mountains. In the middle of the smooth dark water was an island with a single oak tree growing in the center of it, and towards it now Bran drifted. The coracle fetched up against the shore and then Bran was on the green grass with no sense of movement, and before him stood a man robed in blue.

The mountains burned around them, and the alder trees that fringed round the island's edge burned and even the water itself, crackling, hissing, orange flames leaping high. It was of no concern. Bran had eyes only for the man in front of him.

"Who are you?" he said. "I know you."

The man smiled at him, kind blue eyes crinkling at the corners, and his creased brindle-bearded face was old and young and grave and merry all at once, and so achingly familiar that Bran nearly cried out at it. Around his neck glittered a golden chain linking six quartered circles like Will's scar, and at his belt hung a crystal-hilted sword in a scabbard of white leather and gold. The fire roared, and over it came high yelping sounds like eager hounds or great flocks of geese. "Of course you do, my son," he said.

And Bran was awake, sitting bolt upright, eyes wide and staring, breathing as if he had run a race, in the pre-dawn silence of his own dark bedroom, and he knew.

He rolled out of bed, shaking, and stumbled to the lavatory. He felt light-headed, and the world spun around him as he lurched against the doorframe. He flicked on the light, blinking dazedly at the sudden blaze, and stared at himself in the mirror. Tawny-gold eyes wide and wild in a face bleached whiter than ever stared back. His breath was still coming too fast and the blood roared in his ears, and he clutched the edge of the sink so hard his fingers ached.

"I remember," he whispered to his reflection, and his own voice was strange in his ears. " _I remember_."

The day dawned early, of course, on this longest day of the year, and cloudless, a rare clear morning for the midsummer solstice. Over tea and cold toast with Owen Bran was nearly silent, and as soon as he could he fled into the hills with the sheep and the brown-eyed dogs and the dark specks of birds flying overhead. His thoughts were a whirl, and the whole land around him had new meaning -- or old meaning, long-lost and now back in full and disorienting force as he looked at the cottage of the man he had always called father, and the cormorants wheeling up in flights and flurries from Craig yr Aderyn that he could not now help naming as the door of the birds, and the silent bulk of Cader looming over the whole of the valley. It was not just escape but desperate necessity that led him to fall utterly into the unthinking rhythm of the old familiar task of herding the naked newly shorn sheep, until at last his mind quieted and went numb. He ate little and spoke less at lunch, and went back to the fields as soon as he could get away.

It was late in the afternoon when Will found him, high on the slopes of Cader Idris. They were near Cadfan's Way, Bran noticed, by the border of the land that had been Caradog Prichard's, and now he knew what that was, what it _meant_. "Rhys said you were up this way," Will said cheerfully.

Bran looked at him, silently, and remembered. Remembered Will, seven years before, sprawling on a mountainside with his sleeve caught in Cafall's teeth; remembered Will in the Lost Land, grinning at him from a white horse's back, sober and thoughtful in a grove of seven trees; remembered Will on another Midsummer's Day, tall and defiant against the towering might of the Dark, holding the Sign of Stone. Remembered the look he had surprised on Will's face, once, on that long walk home after everything was over and it was only an afternoon's outing in the hills. Strange loving regret it had been, like a farewell, gone as soon as he realized that Bran was looking.

Will, here and now, not twelve but nineteen, had halted a few feet away and was frowning at him. "Bran?"

"I remember," said Bran softly, and discovered that he could speak after all.

"What?"

"I remember," Bran repeated. "All of it, Will. The day of the dead, and the Lost Land and the midsummer tree. Eirias. You." His voice fell to nearly a whisper. "Me."

Will stood still as a stone, face white as Bran's. "You..." he said huskily. "What? How?"

Bran was silent a long moment. "Nothing that has ever had a place in time is truly lost," he whispered. "Forever and ever, Old One."

Will breathed in, sharply, and then was still, waiting, eyes on Bran. His face was absolutely expressionless, but Bran could see that his muscles were tense as wires. He held himself taut, as though with an incautious movement he would shatter. Or perhaps Bran would, instead. Above, a kestrel called, spiralling in the clear sky.

"You--" said Bran, and then he shut his mouth tightly, because it had come out far more plaintive than he had meant. His head was spinning with fury, regret, grief, pity, and even he was not sure which was strongest. "You knew. _You knew_. All along." It began as an accusation, and that was what he meant and wanted because the anger was clean and easy, but by the last two words it had shaded almost against his will into that plaintive whisper again.

Will nodded, once, silently, and made no other move.

Bran didn't want to think about that. About Will knowing, remembering always what had been, and still talking to him and laughing with him and kissing him as if everything were normal and that other world had never existed. As if Bran and Will had always been only boys together, and Mrs Rowlands only the kind woman who had half raised Bran, and the Drews just friends met by chance on a hike through the scenic Welsh countryside. It complicated everything. "How could you?" he asked, and he meant it as a furious demand but in spite of himself his voice cracked.

Will exhaled, and Bran wondered if he had been holding his breath the whole time. "You chose," he said, very quietly. "And you were mortal in the world of men. You are. And that was your choice and your right and it bound me too."

Bran closed his eyes. Tears prickled behind his eyelids, but he was a king's son and a deacon's son and himself and he would not let them fall. " _Loving bonds_ ," he whispered, remembering what he had said to Merriman and Arthur his blue-eyed beloved stranger of a father, on that other Midsummer's Day so long ago, when he had chosen.

Will said nothing.

"I dreamed," Bran said, and caught a breath that was not quite a laugh and not quite a sob, and opened his eyes. Will's hand lifted as if to reach out in pity, and fell back to his side. Bran felt his anger waver and fall to ashes inside of him. He felt drained, scooped hollow of everything but grief and love, for himself, for his past, for both his fathers and for Will who stood before him still pale and unspeaking, waiting. "Oh, Will _bach_. Fire on the mountain, and his eyes..."

He had no other words. He raised a hand and closed it around Will's wrist, and stepped forward, close to him. He laid his other hand along Will's cheek, white fingers against sun-browned skin, and Will closed his eyes and leaned almost imperceptibly into the caress. Will's arms came up, a long moment later, and wrapped around Bran's waist, holding him gently. They stayed like that, standing under the bright sunlight on the slopes of Cader Idris, while the north wind blew around them and lifted their hair.

  



End file.
